Facial recognition technology has, at the time of filing of this application, mainly been used in the United States by various national security agencies and police forces. While there has been some limited uses of facial recognition technology in the private sector, these have been fairly limited. However, facial recognition technology has recently been incorporated in private security systems, such as those used for gambling casinos, in the production of Hollywood movies, and as a component in other software systems such as FACEBOOK, just to name a few of those applications. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on one's perspective, technology prognosticators have predicted an explosion in products employing facial recognition technology in the fairly near future and long thereafter.
Facial recognition technology generally requires three functional components: a) an image, which is taken from a digital camera or a video frame taken from a video camera, or any other image taken by a suitable camera and which can be digitized; b) facial recognition software to analyze the acquired image; and c) a computer or other computational equipment needed to run the software and provide a database or link to a database. Because all three of these components are becoming increasingly powerful, cheaper, and smaller by the day, it is believed that facial recognition is no longer going to be primarily limited to governmental security functions but instead will find itself incorporated in a wide array of non-government activities and in particular commercial applications. One commercial application which is being developed is the customizable digital advertising billboard (video screen or display), which uses a camera to acquire an image of a potential viewer approaching the advertising billboard. Based on processing by a computer of this acquired image via now cheap hardware using facial recognition software, the advertising billboard then selects a particular advertisement suitable to some characteristic of the potential viewer. The characteristics can be general, such as gender, age, race, etc., or more specifically to an individual having some known shopping or buying habits. This customized advertisement is then projected to the video billboard for viewing by the approaching potential viewer. All of this is done in the second or two while the potential viewer is walking toward the advertising billboard, with the intent that the potential viewer will then notice the customized advertisement displayed which is selected according to the individual's recognized characteristic. Advertising systems such as this were vividly simulated in the movie “The Minority Report”, where billboards customize themselves to the specific identity and likely interest of each passersby.
Other not quite so innocent applications which employ this same near instantaneous facial recognition may soon be found more and more often in our public and commercial environments.
Thus, while the legitimate security functions of government and police agencies should not be circumvented, there are many individuals that would desire not to have their identity automatically and surreptitiously determined in a non-security setting such as inside a shopping mall. Fortunately, facial recognition technology is still not foolproof. Obviously, if one wears a mask over one's face, or covers one's face with one's hand, or wears a fake nose and glasses, the recognition systems can be easily disrupted or defeated. However, most people would not desire to walk around with a sock cap pulled down over their face or with their hand or magazine held up in front of their face for this purpose. Thus, it would be useful to have a method or device which would not be obvious to passersby as a facial recognition disrupter, but which would mask ones appearance or facial characteristics generally as one passes by a facial recognition system.